Poverty
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morewhen you’d really like to wear sheer joy
On Tuesday, November 15 th, 2011When Rosa’s youngest, little Liliana, scooped up that puppy right there next to the potato patch, she just hid behind his gaping mouth, eyes all large and laughing. Rosa told us what Liliana had done — that Liliana had found that puppy wandering abandoned — lost— outside her classroom. That Liliana had brought the puppy home to love. That Liliana loved. ...
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moreWhen Compassion becomes a Gold Rush
On Saturday, November 12 th, 2011We wind around a thousand mountains and canoe up a river of gold to find him. To find the boy someone named Jonathan. Gold panners, they run the whole throat of the Amazon through their boxes, through their bare hands, looking for gold flakes flashing… Jonathan, he just stands by his shack on toothpick stilts and barely flashes a smile. (Photo by Keely Scott)...
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moreWhen You Are In Desperate Need of Hope
On Thursday, November 10 th, 2011It can come straight out of an empty sky – Hope like a cloud — only the size of a man’s fist. When I meet Lidia, when I cup her face and pull her near, and her mother stands right next to here, there in her white shirt. Her mother named Blanca and smiling. Blanca, Lidia’s mother come looking...
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moreBecause God Really knows How to Meet Needs
On Wednesday, November 09 th, 2011The man said he couldn’t leave his pigs. That me asking him to leave his pigs was like him asking a nursing mama to abandon her babies — and a couple hundred of them. I understood what the Farmer was saying, I did. The way the man needed his hogs or something in him would fester and hurt, a mastitis of work. He tells me — days of just sitting and standing, it will...
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moreWhen Thanksgiving Becomes Thanksliving …
On Tuesday, November 08 th, 2011The Farmer and I traveling with Compassion to Ecuador, slipped into our beds here in Quito this morning at 2 am after a day of travelling… us carrying this story from home and all the preparing to go, carrying it out now into the Ecuador streets… Thank you for traveling with us in these posts this week and taking the time to pray over the children… When she pu...
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morewhen you don’t want to be immune to life
On Friday, November 04 th, 2011‘I’ve needled a few pigs.” That’s what he says after he’s filled out the forms and the doctor peels back the tab on the syringe. “So, yeah – just feel free to — “ he waves his right hand in the direction of his left deltoid. “Yeah – just – go ahead.” The Farmer, he finds words and ...
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morewhen food’s a hallowed thing
On Friday, July 29 th, 2011Weeds keep coming up and we can’t keep up. But July, all carefree, just shrugs its shoulders and the zucchinis bloom happily anyways into these steaming plates, lettuce frilling the edge of sultry days. So I take that basket brought back from Africa, the one with the name of the woman who wove it, written right there on the tag in her own hand — I take that basket t...
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moreWhen You Want Easter to be as Meaningful as Christmas
On Wednesday, March 23 rd, 2011‘I’ll need a match.” Levi says this looking for light, to ignite a wick and singe us with prayer. How many flames to burn off dross and liquefy the steeled cold into the mold of Christ? I hand Levi the matchbox. He snaps one red match head into a singular furnace. The ringing candles flicker over wood. “It is like Christmas…” Levi bends over a waxed torch. ...
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morewhat really happens when you give to the poor
On Thursday, February 03 rd, 2011The day her letter finally arrives, a letter from Xiomara, the girl in the middle of the frame and the only sponsored child I’ve met, I rip into it anxious, and part of me soars. We had wheeled happy the day we met, the happiest day. How long has it been since that day in Guatemala with Compassion Bloggers that had undone me, them showing me the bare heart of Jesus? She is a...
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moreTo Set Up a Complete Nativity Scene:
On Wednesday, December 15 th, 2010It’s Day 85 of my life-after Guatemala that I set out the nativity; it’s only now that I remember that the baby would be about 85 days old too. It’s my only souvenir from Guatemala — a red soil formed Mary, three clay-combed wise men, a Babe the size of a thimble. Headbands for the girls, a thin woven bracelet for ...
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moreChristmas: Thinking about Whose Birthday It Is
On Wednesday, November 17 th, 2010I t’s been over ten years of nothing under the Christmas tree here. Strange, the way children teach men. :: It was dark, I do remember that. Bedtime. Smoothing back hair, kissing foreheads. On round moon hanging large outside the window, an ornament dangling off stars, decorating the night. I had gifts to wrap. So, pull up the blankets. Prayers. And the...
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what’s really muffling out the music of our lives
On Wednesday, September 08 th, 2010It’s late Tuesday night and the plane’s supposed to have turned its steel beak to the sky hours ago but we’re still at the gate waiting, waiting and making big talk about small things. “You always carry your guitar with you on trips like this?” Dustin, he’s a West Texas man moved up to Colorado to work with Compassion. And he’s asking Shaun, a Texan transplan...
